02/24/13 - Stash Update

So yesterday I went grocery shopping at Fred Meyer's, and allowed myself to buy some nail polish/nail supplies. :)

That's four nail polishes, one white striping polish, quick dry drops, and a brush.

Let's start with the nail polishes:

I have mixed feelings on the whole texture thing, but I decided to pick up one of the new Milani Textures so I could try it out.
I also picked up this Covergirl colour, which I later (like, an hour after the picture, silly me) learned is called Lav-Endure. Not sure that's written on the bottle. Anyway, I love my Lime Crime pastels, but Lavendairy is definitely a warm toned pastel purple. I felt the need for a cool toned pastel purple as well. Here's a quick bottle comparison shot to show what I mean:

And then the two Essence polishes were just for fun. Prom-Berry looks like a gorgeous deep dark purple. I will say I'm not sure how I feel about the style of the brush. It's really wide, which is just.. unusual. It may take some getting used to.
And then the Fruity polish, which I later learned is Kiwi a Day (definitely not on the bottle), I just had to get. They're whole display for their Fruity collection was just adorable. I kinda wanted it all. But I knew I wouldn't actually use most of it, but it was just so cute! So I limited myself to this one. And I love it even more knowing the title, because I love kiwis!

I decided to pick up the white striper because, why not. See if I like it better or worse than dipping a normal paintbrush in white nail polish.

The drying drops I got primarily because I've been keeping my eyes out for something quick drying for when I do my 5 year old niece's nails. She wants to start playing again immediately after I paint her nails, and thus almost always messes them up! But a lot of the quick drying drops and sprays and whatnot are pretty expensive. But Essence is cheap, so I'm looking forward to trying it out. If it works on my patient nails, that's good news for my niece!

And lastly, I got the brush for cleaning up the edges. It's a different style than what I was using before, but by nail the acetone has caused what I was using before to completely fall apart. I don't have any bristles left. ^^; So hopefully this will still work. And if not, it was cheap and looks cute (love that purple!), so who knows.

In another couples days I may write another Stash Update, just to reflect on the status of my whole stash. But thanks for reading. :)

Swatch: China Glaze - Fairy Dust

As soon as China Glaze - Fairy Dust arrived in the mail, I knew I'd be doing a pic-heavy swatch post with it. It's truly one of those polishes that I really should have owned a long time ago, and can't believe I waited this long to get it.

There's no sun right now, and these are all taken at night in artificial light, and still you can see the holo glitter! Truly fantastic.
Here are two pictures over Sinful Colors - Purple Diamond. The rest are over Wet 'n' Wild - Ebony Hates Chris.

The effect is a little more subtle over lighter colours, but as you can see, over black it's just great.

Basically it seems to be a glitter top coat made up of silver and holo fine glitter. And I love it.

And there's no top coat in these pictures. Fairy Dust is surprisingly smooth.

Here's an obligatory blurry shot, which I mostly included because the blurs almost look like hearts:

And finally:

I don't think I could say how much I love this polish. Would you all mind if I just wore it constantly? :p
I only got it a little while ago, and I've already worn it on my Rainbow Dotticure nails, my Lovin' Purple toes, and my Galaxy nails. Expect to see it a lot more often. I'm actually thinking of getting a second bottle already, just in case. I love this polish. I think it's a definite must-have. :)

02/20/13 - Galaxy Nails

Okay, I finally did it. When I saw how Fairy Dust looked over black, I knew it was finally my turn to jump on the galaxy nail bandwagon.
Now that I've done it, I see it's ridiculously over done for a reason: it's easy, it looks good and even if everyone has done it, it will always look somewhat unique. It doesn't require any particular tools or small brushes, and is easy enough to do with your non-dominant hand.

I Google Image-searched "galaxy" and drew inspiration from what I saw. But basically, you can't mess this up. Galaxies take on so many different forms that what at first you might think was an unfortunate blob on your nail, you'll realize really does look like that galaxy way over there.

I just used a tooth pick, a make up sponge, and the regular polish brushes to make this.
There were ridiculous number of polishes that went into the making of this. I don't really want to list them all out, but here's a picture:

Yup. You can't even tell with half of these, since the galaxies were made up of sponging in random amounts layers of all these polishes.
The main ones used, of course, are Wet 'n' Wild - Ebony Hates Chriss for the black background, China Glaze - Fairy Dust for the sparklies in the background, Pure Ice - Super Star for the white stars, and Orly - Twilight for another coat of sparklies over the top. That combination was used on every nail.
If anyone really wants to know the names, I guess I can write it out. But I'll wait for a request. :p

Unfortunately, there is no sun here to speak of, but this still looks pretty and exciting to me. I'm glad I finally jumped on this bandwagon. :)

Swatch: Tip Toe - Preppy Pink

I hope everyone had a pleasant Valentine's Day. :)
Here are swatch pics of the colour at the base of my last design.
Two coats of Tip Toe - Preppy Pink.

I found it hard to get colour-accurate pictures of this.

It's essentially exactly its title - a preppy pink. It also has silver shimmer.

Formula was not the greatest, but good enough.

I think it makes a pretty good base for a Valentine's design.

I've used it before in my Sea Life nails, and my Valentine's day nails.
That's it! Have a good weekend. :)

02/10/13 - Sweet Rainbow Hearts

For Valentine's day, I was racking my brain. I still love what I did last year, but a similarly great idea was not really coming to mind. Finally, I decided to follow this Youtube tutorial, with a little twist of my own.
And by twist, I mean rainbow, of course. Because I love that. :p

(How's the water mark, by the way? Just starting to test it out, since I'm entering this in a few contests.)

I started with Tip Toe - Preppy Pink. Then I did the gradient hearts with the Lime Crime set (Parfait Day, Peaches <3 Cream, Crema de Limon, Pastelchio, Once in a Blue Mousse, and Lavendairy).
I've said this before, but I think I'm really not a huge fan of tape manis. I like the things you can do with it, like this, and this came out a lot better than the last time I tried tape, but they're so.. fussy. Oh well. I do like the results. :)

I guess this isn't super obviously a Valentine's day design. I love hearts any day of the year. In fact, I just got one tattooed on me. :p But I did choose a pink background because of Valentine's day. If I did this any other time of year, I probably would've done an off-white colour or something. But this is okay. :)
[ETA: Though I did get a compliment on these from someone who specifically said, "Oo, I like your Valentine's day nails!" So I guess it works. :)]

So yup! Happy Valentine's Day, everyone. And if you see these nails in any contests, feel free to vote for them (if it's that kind of contest). :)

ETA: Here's a link to one of my contest entries, that you can like or repin to vote for me. :)

02/10/13 - Lovin' Purple Toes

Gosh, I really need help coming up with titles. :p

Anyway, here's how I recently posted my toes. With Valentine's day coming up, I asked DBF how he thought I should paint my toes. He suggested for my toes, "light purple background with white hearts randomly distributed and maybe one silver one." Okay, sounds good!

I used Lime Crime - Lavendairy as the purple, Pure Ice - Super Star for the white hearts, and Nabi silver for the silver hearts. I also have a coat of China Glaze - Fairy Dust over the purple, because I love sparkles on my toes. :)

This is cute, simple, and great for Valentine's day coming up. Thanks love!

01/31/13 - Stash Update

The other day I decided I would spend an Amazon gift card that I got for Christmas on nail polish. :) So I ordered three new nail polishes, and the all arrived in less than four days!
First, I got China Glaze - Concrete Catwalk.

I've been needing a grey that's darker than my current grey but not black, and this one fits the bill. Here it is compared to my other grey, Sally Hansen - Wet Cement (also, I find it funny that the names are kind of similar.):

I also got Kleancolor - Grass Green:

I've been needing a green that is fairly opaque and green-green. I've recently realized I have three things that call themselves green, but they're all neon green. But I have now fixed that problem! :D
And lastly I got China Glaze - Fairy Dust.

This polish is beautiful! As soon as I pulled it out of the package, I thought, "Why on earth have I not owned this for a long time?" When I first saw mention of it online, I thought it was just silver sparkles. Then I learned it was holo-sparkles, and it became a must have!
And here's my swatch plate:

:)